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Re: Supporting vs stifling curiosity



Perhaps the real problem is as old as the middle ages...the teacher
chose the book knowledge over the student's experience. The deductive
form of teaching that we all use, more or less, does not leave open the
possibility that the dogma is not correct. Therein lies one of the
great advantages of an inquiry based approach, since experience is used
in the way we scientists know we use it, while unfortunately, most
teachers do not know.

cheers

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Rick Tarara wrote:

I'll be more negative ;-). 'Active Engagement' is not the end-all solution
to everything not understood. Sometimes we _really_ do need to go 'look it
up', to read the correct information, and then to THINK ABOUT IT--OK that's
'actively engaging' one's brain! The problem here is that every teacher
needs the intellectual integrity to KNOW that he/she DOESN'T know it all.
We need enough humility to understand that our students may actually know
something that we don't and that we may have learned something wrong or may
misunderstand something that we've learned. That's the hard part. I was a
few years into teaching before I learned that the water rotation thing only
worked at large scale. We've all had these 'revelations'. Maybe the
problem is that the education programs don't (in so many ways) properly
prepare people to really be teachers. How to deal with
informational/conceptual disagreements with your students is, I suspect,
seldom if ever dealt with.

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Bellina" <jbellina@saintmarys.edu>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: Supporting vs stifling curiosity


Seems to me that the real problem here is that the teacher is in the
same place as our students or ourselves when we have one of these
misconnceptions...why do we think that simply telling the teacher, or
refering them to a web site will make a change in how they believe the
world works? Seems to me that more active engagement is needed...and
that is much tougher problem.

sorry to be so negative,

joe

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Robert Cohen wrote:

..and how do you refer the teacher to the site without making the
teacher
feel even more defensive?

____________________________________________
Robert Cohen; rcohen@po-box.esu.edu; http://www.esu.edu/~bbq
Physics, East Stroudsburg Univ, E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Woolf [mailto:larry.woolf@GAT.COM]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 11:55 AM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Supporting vs stifling curiosity


This common misconception is prevalent in elementary and middle school
science books.
Refer your teacher to the following site:
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html

Larry Woolf; General Atomics; 3550 General Atomics Court, San
Diego, CA
92121; Phone:858-455-4475; FAX:858-455-4268; http://www.sci-ed-ga.org


Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. 219-284-4662
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556


Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. 219-284-4662
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556